Guido looks at the economy and sees real trouble ahead, it needs decisive action, not hand-wringing words from politicians about tax simplification. The property market is seized up and consumer confidence is draining away. A massive pro-growth tax package is required now, the earlier the better.

George Bush is pushing a bi-partisan growth package targeting $150 billion in tax relief at individuals and businesses to kick-start private sector spending. That is a stimulus equal to 1% of U.S. GDP.

Speaking at an interfaith conference at the UN General Assembly in New York this morning, Gordon Brown has just called for global tax cuts, “a temporary and affordable fiscal stimulus” was needed to tackle the downturn he said. Gordon told journalists that he intends to ask leaders at the G20 summit to produce fiscal stimulus packages of tax cuts and spending increases to “stimulate growth in our economies”.

Perhaps Gordon didn’t notice that George Bush actually got his temporary stimulus in at the beginning of the year, whilst our far-sighted financial genius has yet to even announce his growth package, which is probably why US GDP growth last quarter was not quite as bad as UK GDP growth (-0.5). How is he going to blame that on America?

Gordon also warned against protectionism, a strategy that has proved to be “the road to economic ruin in the past”. Obama ran on a protectionist ticket.

The Tories are calling it a “tax con”, because debt may rise and taxes may have to go up later, of course if we don’t cut taxes and growth is even worse, tax revenues may well still fall and government debt will rise anyway. Under the Tory plan however the economy will have been additionally weakened by the heavier tax burden. This used to be orthodox Conservative economic analysis, it seems the last supporters of Brownite fiscal rules are in the Tory treasury team…